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User blog:Ana Imfinity/Feels like at the beginning of the Space Age
From all space simulators, I found the Spaceflight to be the most easy to use and the only one that easily allows construction and driving of ships. No need to have experience, no need to know much... just build, explore and play. The space is empty of ships and debris, just waiting you to come and explore. First ship into space, first astronaut into orbit, first Moon hard landing, first man on the Moon, first man on Mars, then Venus exploration, Mercury... But, if we are at the beginning, which side will I chose? The Soviets or the Americans? Well, I would chose the Soviets. This is not because I was born in the time and in the borders of the Soviet Empire, but because Spaceflight Simulator, in the free version, is more similar to the way the first Soviet rockets took off. The Americans took one important advantage: they took the legacy of the Nazi Germany V2 rocket program, which allowed them more easy to build. The Soviets built it all from scrap, without the advantage of anything that existed before. Without knowing much about rockets, the Soviets managed to build their first rocket engines and their first rockets. At that time, their principle was more simple: build, launch and... failure. Examine what went wrong and improve. NASA took a much more scientific approach: do math, test parts, test engines, test equipment, do simulations. So, this is what anyone starts doing with this simulation, this is what I did. I built a rocket, sent it to space and... failed to achieve low Earth orbit. I sent another one and... failed to open all engines on the second stage at once. The rocket ran out of control. I launched the third one... and accidentally detached the third stage while still in Earth atmosphere. Soon, came the first achievements: the first rocket into orbit, the first Earth soft landing, the first Moon flyby, the first Moon orbiter... but for each astronaut successfully returning home, five died in the cosmos. Then, came the difficult missions. Many attempts to reach other planets failed, with astronauts sent to die in the cosmic void. finally, a Mars flyby returned successfully, followed by a Venus flyby and a Mercury soft landing... only that, the astronaut, left there, had no way to survive until a second mission could come to rescue him. Then, came the return missions. The first successful Mars landing. Only that, the ship remained out of fuel in Earth orbit, failing to bring the poor astronaut home. Second attempt was a success. Then, came the Mercury and Venus return missions. Again, many astronauts successfully landed, but never made it back home. It looked like no ship can make it out of Venus. Finally, the solution appeared with the ship listed here, probably the most massive ship that can be built in the simulator. I call it Ana Express. But even for this ship, to perform a Mercury or Venus return mission was very hard... but not impossible. Even so, there was one successful mission in five. Then, the solution appeared as the helping ships, unmanned ships that would push the main ship out of the sphere of influence of another planet. Remember what I said about the Soviet ships? They are amazing because, with little resources and with limited knowledge, they managed to perform amazing missions. At that time, the soviets had not the resources to build big engines... and so, they made many small engines. The rockets had a large base, like a skirt, so that many small engines could fit. Now, if you look at the ship listed here, you can see something similar. At launch, it is pushed by nine engines, including two on the second stage. This unusual construction is required by the limited building space, just like the first Soviet rockets were forced to have a larger base, to fit all engines inside. If we also take into consideration the helping ships, which are always in place to push a ship that lost too much fuel, you get the picture. What I built inside this simulation is more a Soviet then an American space program. I could easily purchase the paid extension, 4$ is not too much, but the pleasure of performing all missions with what limited resources the free version allows, motivated me this way, to show that it is possible. Now, the only thing that the game needs, is the introduction of other planets, so that we can perform tasks similar to what Dawn, Cassini, Galileo, voyager and New Horizons missions did in the outer Solar System... and even more. Let's just hope that Stef will have the time, the will and the power to enlarge the solar System. In that day, I will honor his great efforts by purchasing the paid version. Category:Blog posts